Privacy Groups Propose Do-Not-Track List - Advertising Age - Digital

Privacy Groups Propose Do-Not-Track List - Advertising Age - Digital

Here's an idea, an online do-not-call registry. Privacy groups going head-to-head with online marketers. Bet I know who will win.

One of the proudest days of my life

This photo was taken on March 6, 2005 after John Harmsen, myself, and Russell Noye completed a bike ride from Kalgoorlie to Perth - that's 600 kilometres - in 19 hours, 6 minutes. We averaged 32.8 kph. Russ and John are just as tough as old boots.

Official Google Blog: Google search privacy: Plain and simple

Official Google Blog: Google search privacy: Plain and simple

Search queries saved in logs: Misspelled search terms, prompts for "did you mean".

IP address: Search results returned to the correct computer. Can tell which provider and general location.

Cookies: Small file stored on computer. Reminds of preferences from last time. Search results per pages and language preference

Log of visit: Receipt of visit. Search term, IP address, cookie ID, browser version, operating system, date and time of search.

Some parts of IP address and cookie will be deleted after 18 months.

Change of State: Information, Policy, and Power: Chapter 9

Change of State: Information, Policy, and Power: Chapter 9: "Information, Policy, and Power in the Informational State Introduction"

http://www.uwm.edu/%7Ebraman/bramanpdfs/028_Braman_Chapt9.pdf

War in the age of digital machines: Manuel de Landa

De Landa proposes the concept of the Panspectron (p. 206). Whilst referring to Bentham's Panopticon, which is he points out, a powerful tool for political and societal control through the perception of continuous surveillance, he suggest the Panspectron gathers all the available information about all subjects all of the time. Through a systems of filters and key word matching matters of interest are identified and this results in the subject being brought into focus.

Put this in a modern context and we have the system of robots (bots) employed by search engines that continually search the internet, reporting their findings of information and information linkages back to central points. Data is then analysed through a system of algorithms, such as Google's Page Rank system and this results in the searches we use today. It's only when someone searches (employees the Panspectron's keywords and filters) does the relevant data appear.

Google Public Policy Blog: Data retention: the right balance between privacy and security

A quick post to a piece on the Google Public Policy blog from Peter Fleischer about Google and the EU policy on data retention. Will probably be worth coming back to this one.

Google Public Policy Blog: Data retention: the right balance between privacy and security:

"Citizens should have a right to privacy online. And governments have an obligation to keep their citizens safe. Finding the right balance between privacy and security is a delicate balancing act. Europe’s recent experience with data retention holds interesting lessons for everyone concerned with this balance."

Thesis for my next essay

Are individual privacy rights at greater risk as a result of Google's privacy practices?

Eric Scmidt calls for new global privacy regulations

I found this on Peter Fleischer's blog. It's Eric Scmidt, CEO of Google, urging the nations of the world to adopt new privacy regulations. Although it sounds good in theory, the cynic in me believes that it's a diversionary tactic to take attention away from the Google/DoubleClick deal. The comment by Anne Cavoukian tends to reinforce this thought. Ms Cavoukian suggests Google adopts a set of privacy standards her organisation has already developed.

Why Google wants to get to know you - more

Google wants to get to know you - more. Although widely critised for their privacy policies, including a stinging rebuke from Privacy International, Google is mounting a PR campaign of epic proportions to convince web surfers, legislators, and the public in general that the world will be a better place by the search giant knowing even more details about our lives.

As as has been reported here previously, Google is currently in negotiations with the FTC and EEC to seek approval for their USD$3.1 billion (yes, that is a lot of money)
purchase of online advertising agency DoubleClick. Their strategy is simple. Google already dominates the search advertising market with their USD$10.6 billion dollar revenue stream continuing to grow on the back of their highly successful Adsense advertising programme - Adsense places advertisements onto web pages based on the page's content. But as much as that is an ingenious, and clearly lucrative marketing strategy, Google knows little about the interests of web surfers in general. And that's where the powerplay of the DoubleClick purchase begins. Doubleclick is the master of the online advertising world; there's hardly a major brand who hasn't used the company to design an online campaign. And the reason for their success is that they're clever, very clever. Utilising an intricate system of advertisements, cookies, and other tricks of the trade, DoubleClick can track the movements of web surfers as they travel from site to site. From this tracking, surveillance, and recording, DoubleClick has amassed profiles of consumers to the point where they are now able to deliver tailored web advertising to a web surfer based on their surfing habits. And it is this asset that has Google so interested. By combining there immense power in search, with DoubleClick's strength in digital advertising, Google will have completed an amazing metamorphosis from garage-incubated hatchling, to online privacy monster in just 10 short years.

Clearly, there are significant concerns about the power Google will have at its disposal, particularly as that power translates into potential breaches of individual privacy. After all, Google/DoubleClick will have the resources, based on the combination of search and browsing history, to predict and influence consumer behaviour in ways never before imagined. And it is these threats that have privacy advocacy groups clambering to be heard, and it is these capabilities that are seeing competitors, such as Yahoo and Microsoft running to the government accusing Google of being variously anti-competitive and a risk to individual privacy.

Google know there's a lot at stake here. Knowing that better targeted advertising means more effective advertising, and more effective advertising means bigger advertising revenues, Google continues to pursue this deal vigorously. With some pundits expecting them to gain the required approvals for the deal, we could soon find that the "Do No Evil" enterprise knows much more about us than we might expect.



This post was originally on one of my class blogs.

Free analytical research report anyone?

Over the next few days I'll be writing an analytical research report examining an issue or practice that has come to my attention in the process of completing one of my class projects, which involved preparing a business plan for an Internet media business. It's supposed to give me better research skills and the opportunity to critically evaluate my findings. Basically that's the brief, but the real story is the lecturer is quite OK on us researching and writing about any half decent business issue.

You know what the trouble is here? I have no idea what the issue is. I might do something about web 2.0, the insignificance economy, modularisation of information or...I don't know.

Any ideas? If you want me to write a free paper about something of concern in your business now is your chance to say so.

First Monday

Just submitted an essay on the social trends behind the Twitter phenomena to First Monday. I hope it gets published but I'm not holding my breath. It's probably too short and not deep enough. One thing is certain though, if I don't submit it, it won't get published.

Getting a job

So it's rolling toward the end of semester and the end of the year. Time to start looking for a holiday job, but what to do? I thought I'll phone my brother being as how he's got heaps of contacts in the mining industry. What better way than to go up north in the blazing heat and work on the mines to earn a quid. But, you know, it's not so easy. Here I am with an MBA, close to 18 years of management experience, 22 years of real estate marketing, and two thirds my way through a Master of Internet Studies and I have no idea what I'm going to do next. Funny huh?! I kind of imagined I'd experience this transitional stage between careers, a stage where I know what I want to leave behind but don't know what I want to do next.

There are days when academia appeals, and there are plenty of moments when I get the sense I have something to offer government administrators when it comes to the web and the possibilities there. I just love the web and life in general - it's just all so exciting.

I'm really not sure what's going to be next. Any ideas?

Blog ethics by Rebecca Blood

In Rebecca Blood's Weblog Ethics, Blood proposes guidelines for the development of a personal blogging policy. It's worth noting that these same policies could also be used as the spine for a corporate blogging policy, after all ethics are ethics.

For the record, Blood's proposed list includes:

1. Publish as fact only that which you believe is true
2. If material exists online, link to it when you reference it
3. Publicly correct any misinformation
4. Write each entry as if it could not be changed; add to, but do not rewrite or delete, any entry
5. Disclose any conflict of interest
6. Note questionable and biased sources.

These are practical and sensible steps and make for sound and reliable blogging on which people can rely. Thanks to Rebecca for putting things so succinctly.

Anti-employer blogging

Here is the PDF to the previous post: Author Konrad Lee

Anti-employer blogging

ANTI-EMPLOYER BLOGGING: EMPLOYEE BREACH OF THE DUTY OF LOYALTY AND THE PROCEDURE FOR ALLOWING DISCOVERY OF A BLOGGER'S IDENTITY BEFORE SERVICE OF PROCESS IS EFFECTED

This article from the Duke Law and Technology Review suggests that law reform is needed in the area of discovering the identity of employees who create anonymous anti-employer blogs. They suggest that employees owe their employers a duty of loyalty and that the current legal process involved in identifying such a blogger is too cumbersome.

Unpacking “Privacy” for a Networked World

Unpacking “Privacy” for a Networked World: Leysia Palen and Paul Dourish

Drawing on the theories of Altman who, they propose that privacy is a constant process of the negotiation of boundaries. This, they see, is different to other notions of privacy which are created through a notion of personal withdrawal. Altman, they suggest, proposes that privacy is not static but people operate on a spectrum of "openness" and "closedness" and this depends on the context and the desirability of the ends that are being sought.

They posit three boundaries that are in constant tension: Disclosure (what is disclosed), Identity (details about the person/organisation), and Temporality (associated with time).

They argue that to live in the modern world requires us to disclose something of ourselves to the public and they point out that some people utilise disclosure as a way of limiting access of others to the self and they do this through the creation of online personae that determines the information they chose to release.

"Active participation in the networked world requires disclosure of information simply to be a part of it. To purchase goods, we make ourselves visible in public space;
in exchange for the convenience of shopping on-line, we choose to disclose personal identity information for transactional purposes."

They point out that defining the boundaries of the self online is difficult indeed and involves technologies that are poor at assisting this process. The permanence of information, the uncertainty that is created in the creation of the "other" and the inability to know what others are doing with the personal information we send makes this a problematic boundary creation process.

We act to manage our current privacy in accord with our past experiences and the future concerns or benefits we foresee as a result of our actions today.

They conclude by reinforcing that privacy is not static but rather a "dynamic response to circumstances" and the ongoing negotiation of boundaries. It is a balancing of tensions.

Valuating Privacy

In this research article Huberman, Adar, and Fine propose that individuals have a price or value on the data which they are willing to reveal, and this price is connected with the perceived desirability of the personal trait in the group to which they are seeking to reveal their information. They propose that their is a direct correlation between the perceived desirability of the trait and the price which people place on the data. Where the trait has a low perceived desirability the price demanded for this data will be high.

As an example they asked participants to value their weight and they demonstrated a linear relationship between a person's weight and the price they put on giving up this information. They also noted that a person's attitude to privacy affected the price they charged with those who were concerned most about privacy demanding a higher price for personal data than those who cared little for privacy.

Their research suggests therefore, that self-publication increases as the payoff increases. This helps explain why people tend to reveal much about themselves in apparently "closed" groups as a way to achieve group acceptance or popularity.

It seems the law of supply and demand are alive and well when it comes to privacy.

Blogging as Social Activity...

Have only had a chance to skim read Blogging as Social Activity, or,
Would You Let 900 Million People Read Your Diary?, however it will be worth coming back to for a more in depth look. It's a detailed study on why people blog and covers some aspects about blogging and privacy.

Bloggers' Expectations of Privacy and Accountability: An Initial Survey

Here's a few notes on an article relating to privacy concerns and practices in blogging, with references at the bottom of the post.

Ongoing authorship. People look for and expect a consistent author and voice of a blog.

Archival/permanent nature of posts are exaggerated by RSS feeds which create broadcast copies of blog posts which cannot be later deleted. Most bloggers edit past posts to some degree or another, but are also aware of the difficulty in erasing a blog post completely. This appears to be contradictory behaviour in that once a blog post is out there, it's out there. Editing is not much use. Most bloggers are unconcerned that their blog posts are permanently archived, and show signs of being ambivalent about privacy, until such time as they have an unpleasant experience.

Frequency and brevity of blogging with corresponding reduction in quality. Often people post to blogs things which haven't been thought through and this can be dangerous.

Most blogs are of the personal journal type. Only 3% are knowledge blogs. Existence of an audience important in helping people 'think' on a blog.This is a knowledge blog.

Women and teenagers account for over half the blogs and these were generally personal journals. Many blogs contain accurate personal information.

People who blog about their employers tend to anonymise their company out of fear of repercussions including the loss of jobs and other negative consequences. It is still unclear both ethically or legally where privacy boundaries sit in relation to the blogging activities of employees and this may be a useful avenue for future research. Companies are urged to have detailed and specific blogging policies in relation to what they see as being acceptable free speech and what is considered to be off-limits. Many companies are yet to fully articulate a blogging policy; despite having company blogs that are updated by employees (Microsoft). Groove Networks and Sun Microsystems are two companies with clearly defined blog policies.

People tend to construct their own policy on identification of themselves, their employer, other individuals, and other companies and products based on a variety of personal values.

"Authors in this study were willing to publish the names of friends and companies/products when they deemed the contents of an entry to be either positive or innocuous. This tendency mirrors results from a previous study showing that people are inclined to value privacy less the more socially desirable a piece of information is (Huberman, Adar, & Fine, 2004)."

Some bloggers perceive they 'know' their audience from reading track-backs and comments, however this only represents the 'core' audience of readers and not the wider audience. This lack of broader perception can lead to bloggers posting comments that their core audience want to read about; and this can lead to posts that reveal personal information that is not suited to the public arena of a blog.

Viegas, F. B. (2005). Bloggers' expectations of privacy and accountability: An initial survey. Journal of Computer-Mediated Communication, 10(3), article 12. http://jcmc.indiana.edu/vol10/issue3/viegas.html

Choices: Drive? or Bike?

We recently sold my car to my nephew and I plan to just use a bike as transport until at least the end of the year. As I'm full time at Uni I figure that I don't have to worry about helmet hair, it takes me only a few minutes longer to get to school, I don't need to worry about parking, and I'm doing my bit for the environment. Besides that, I don't have to worry about paying car insurance, rego, or fuel and servicing costs. All up, my bank balance is better off, I'm better off, and the world is better off by me not having a car. We're getting on fine without it too.

Who knows, I might decide this is a permanent arrangement.

A privacy paradox: Social networking in the United States

I'm currently writing a piece on how micro-blogging (we can include in that mix the mini-updates of moods and feelings on MySpace and Facebook) encourages increased levels of self-disclosure and, therefore, increased risks to privacy. It appears that those at particular risks are you people who, as the quotes below suggest, treat their online profiles as intimate journals rather than as the public spaces they in fact are. Whilst clearly this suggests risks to young people, it also hints at a generational shift in attitudes with regard the ownership of information and the boundaries between what young people consider public and private.

A privacy paradox: Social networking in the United States:

"Students may think that their Facebook or MySpace journal entries are private but they are actually public diaries."

"Herein lies the privacy paradox. Adults are concerned about invasion of privacy, while teens freely give up personal information. This occurs because often teens are not aware of the public nature of the Internet."

The panspectron: Panopticon improved?

Tactical memory: The politics of openness in the construction of memory by Sandra Braman
In this at times meandering article from First Monday, it is proposed that, whilst the Panopticon was, and still is, a powerful way to imagine spaces of discipline, it is the Panspectron that turns today's environment of open information into an always-on surveillance machine. The article suggests that openness of information leads to all of the world's information being gathered and analysed all of the time; and it is not until a query is made that a subject is brought into being.

This concept gives us pause for reflection in that whilst intuitively, open information appears to be a noble end in and of itself, as we consider the ways this information can be used as a tool of mass surveillance, participation in this information love-in appears much less appealing. This is particularly the case when we consider that the gathering and analysing of information is being conducted by both government and big business, neither of whom have a great track record in the protection of libertarian values.

Best I being careful what I write.

Our attitudes to privacy: on Google and Jaiku

Over at Loose Wire Blog, Jeremy Wagstaff lists all the possible private information that Google may know about us as a result of their acquisition of Jaiku, the micro-blogging platform. It's a significant list and one that gives us pause for concern. However it may say much about attitudinal shifts in values that users of online services of all kinds, are giving away information that was previously considered private.

Privacy is all about self-disclosure and the control of access of others to our inner-self. It's very possible that many of us no longer consider our mobile phone number, address, or the suburb in which we live, private information. After all these pieces of information are relatively easy to find out. Maybe we've made the assessment and believe that the rewards outweigh the risks. Or perhaps the Internet has seduced us into believing that we are far safer and far more protected than we really are. I suspect that the answer is a combination of both.

It never ceases to amaze me to see how much private information people are willing to give away on social networking sites such as Facebook. With Google's purchase of Jaiku, they have all the ingredients of a powerful social network, much more powerful in my opinion than the others. The combination of search, gmail, maps, and now Jaiku provide Google with a unique and incredibly deep, understanding of who we are, what we're doing, what interests us, and what we're planning. And if Google complete the DoubleClick deal, who knows, perhaps the machine will tell us that we need a new pair of sneakers before we had a chance to give it a thought.

Speaking of which, mine are getting a bit old.

vod:pod

Here's a new way of blogging (well not new really, but it's kind of new) that's video on demand meets, pod-casting, meets blogging. Yet another mash-up/web 2.0 widget that morphs video onto a blog. Kind of cool so I thought I'd share it. I might use it one day, or not. Who knows?!

Ways to use Twitter

Love it or hate it, Twitter is getting the buzz, and as usual, there are any number of ways to use the service as a marketing tool.

MediaShift . Point of Presence::Your Guide to Micro-Blogging and Twitter | PBS: "Media companies such as the BBC, The New York Times and Al Jazeera are trying out Twitter as a way to send headlines and links to stories. The campaigns for presidential candidates John Edwards and Barack Obama also have Twitter profiles, with thousands of “friends” and “followers” who check out updates."

Despite that I'm doing Internet studies, there are very few of my friends and associates on Twitter or Jaiku. I wonder if it's a cultural thing or will Australia catch on to this technology in time.

Micro-blogging and privacy

My final essays are due soon and I'm writing one of them on how micro-blogging is leading to increased levels of self disclosure and what how this may affect individual privacy. My initial thoughts are that yes, people are disclosing more about themselves and they do this to achieve various personal and economic gains. But as a counterpoint, some people may be unaware of what the collection of their micro-blogs may in fact say about them, and they may be unaware that their posts are virtually permanent, are more public than they may be intended, and may give away information that was not intended for the actual audience.

For example, someone may post that they're "at the beach" and this may give a burglar notice that their house is unwatched. The same post may inadvertently tip off a boss that a person is having a day off when they were booked on sick leave. There are any number of unintended consequences of this micro-blogging phenomena.

So I think I'll include in my essay individual conceptions of private and public spaces and how this is blurred on the Internet, and the the all-pervasiveness of surveillance that can be achieved through monitoring micro-blogging sites including Facebook and MySpace. Is there anything else worth including?

Matt Cutts disagrees with Privacy International

Matt Cutts, head of Google's web spam team is not taking Privacy International's accusation of poor privacy practices lying down. In a fiery and enthusiastic post on his private blog, Cutts claims that PI simply walked past companies that were handling privacy poorly, and focussed instead on a company that is doing something positive about the issue. However, Cutts tends to justify his position by pointing to companies that have done worse than Google as opposed to defending the accusations on their own merits, He cites, for example, the release by AOL of millions of raw search queries that lead to the identification of an AOL user. If this is the case, AOL indeed has some improvements to make, but their sloppiness does not make Google a model corporate citizen. And simply because Google is helping out young software programmers with real world experience, does not change the fact that Google's software necessarily relies on significant and ongoing surveillance that must surely become more comprehensive as new and more personalised services are added.

Undoubtedly PI may have erred on the heavy-handed side when making their assessment of Google. In fact, their report stated that their findings would be seen as controversial. But Google is a big corporation and, rather then being thin-skinned and sensitive, would do well to take on board the concerns expressed in the report and work toward being extra-diligent in the handling of customers' private information.

Emergent Democracy

I'm in the process of considering what I'll write my next essay on, what will be the incisive thesis question. I've done some work on Twitter and why this (and by extension other micr-blogging platforms) are so important, especially to students in Australia, where the penetration of Twitter appears to be much less than in the US and Japan.

I'm reading a piece from Joichi Ito who comments on the Clay Shirky's Power Laws saying that the top ranking blogs may end up being mass media sites and almost impossible to topple from the number one spot. But he also points out that blogs tend to form scale-free networks, with some blogs actings as both nodes and hubs thus linking networks together. I've seen this discussed somewhere else before and it made some sense in that, people tend to act as connectors to their own group of friends and sometimes become the connectors between groups of friends. It helps to explain why some blogs become immensely popular among groups of like-minded people and are linked to regularly (the hubs).

Not sure if this has helped me work out what my thesis statement question is going to be, but at least I've written something.

1 Emergent Democracy

Cousins arrested

It's seems little more than sad that Ben Cousins, a champion footballer, and from what I've seen first hand, a nice bloke, has been arrested by police today. Just why he's been arrested is not clear at this stage, but his involvement with prominent Perth identities and a self-confessed problem with substances, would hint at what may have been at the bottom of things.

I for one feel sorry for him. It would seem that his football career is possibly now over and that could potentially leave him with even more problems. I've said here before that the West Coast Eagles would have been best to trade him to another club, and they're very possibly wishing they did just that.

No guessing what's going to lead the news tonight and what will be all over the front page of the West tomorrow.

Cousins arrested: "WA Police has arrested Ben Cousins after pulling him over in his car, at 10.30am Perth time and searching it in the Perth inner city suburb of Northbridge."

Sex, lies and videotape: turmoil at the Vatican | Special reports | Guardian Unlimited

This is how not to carry out ethnographic research. If he was really conducting research, surely he would have tried to get the consent of the subject first. Oh, that's right, that's what he was trying to do, just the wrong consent. What is it with priests and the Catholic church anyway?

Sex, lies and videotape: turmoil at the Vatican | Special reports | Guardian Unlimited: "But he told the Corriere della Sera newspaper that he 'wanted to carry out a study, probably for publication'. He said he was a registered psychologist and psychotherapist and his aim had been 'to study how priests are ensnared'."

On Google and DoubleClick

Google wants to get to know you - more. Although widely critised for their privacy policies, including a stinging rebuke from Privacy International, Google is mounting a PR campaign of epic proportions to convince web surfers, legislators, and the public in general that the world will be a better place by the search giant knowing even more details about our lives.

As as has been reported here previously, Google is currently in negotiations with the FTC and EEC to seek approval for their USD$3.1 billion (yes, that is a lot of money)
purchase of online advertising agency DoubleClick. Their strategy is simple. Google already dominates the search advertising market with their USD$10.6 billion dollar revenue stream continuing to grow on the back of their highly successful Adsense advertising programme - Adsense places advertisements onto web pages based on the page's content. But as much as that is an ingenious, and clearly lucrative marketing strategy, Google knows little about the interests of web surfers in general. And that's where the powerplay of the DoubleClick purchase begins. Doubleclick is the master of the online advertising world; there's hardly a major brand who hasn't used the company to design an online campaign. And the reason for their success is that they're clever, very clever. Utilising an intricate system of advertisements, cookies, and other tricks of the trade, DoubleClick can track the movements of web surfers as they travel from site to site. From this tracking, surveillance, and recording, DoubleClick has amassed profiles of consumers to the point where they are now able to deliver tailored web advertising to a web surfer based on their surfing habits. And it is this asset that has Google so interested. By combining there immense power in search, with DoubleClick's strength in digital advertising, Google will have completed an amazing metamorphosis from garage-incubated hatchling, to online privacy monster in just 10 short years.

Clearly, there are significant concerns about the power Google will have at its disposal, particularly as that power translates into potential breaches of individual privacy. After all, Google/DoubleClick will have the resources, based on the combination of search and browsing history, to predict and influence consumer behaviour in ways never before imagined. And it is these threats that have privacy advocacy groups clambering to be heard, and it is these capabilities that are seeing competitors, such as Yahoo and Microsoft running to the government accusing Google of being variously anti-competitive and a risk to individual privacy.

Google know there's a lot at stake here. Knowing that better targeted advertising means more effective advertising, and more effective advertising means bigger advertising revenues, Google continues to pursue this deal vigorously. With some pundits expecting them to gain the required approvals for the deal, we could soon find that the "Do No Evil" enterprise knows much more about us than we might expect.

Three ways to build an online media business to $50m in revenue « Lightspeed Venture Partners Blog

Three ways to build an online media business to $50m in revenue « Lightspeed Venture Partners Blog: "Here are three ways to get to $50m in revenue as an online media business; indulge me in some math:"

History of Social Network Sites

Jade

This one's for you. It's an in-depth look at social networking sites by prolific blogger, Danah Boyd. Danah's an addictive writer and her blog is worth visiting.


History of Social Network Sites: "Authors: danah boyd and Nicole Ellison Version: September 4, 2007 Social Network Sites: Definition and Conception"

Feminism, democracy and the right to privacy: Annabelle Lever

Feminism.pdf (application/pdf Object)